The Republican National Committee and its campaign arm, the National Republican Congressional Committee, switched quickly to endorse Hoffman on Saturday after previously being strongly behind Scozzafava. And on Sunday, Minority Leader John A. Boehner , R-Ohio, and Minority Whip Eric Cantor , R-Va., pledged to help Hoffman secure a seat on the Armed Services Committee, on which McHugh had been the ranking member.

“Doug Hoffman has our full support for the next available seat on the House Armed Services Committee so he can best serve the interests of Fort Drum and the troops and military families of New York’s 23rd Congressional District,” the two leaders said in a statement.

The race has emerged as a major skirmish in the “battle for the soul of the Republican Party,” between pragmatists who say the party’s setbacks in 2006 and 2008 recommend recruiting more moderate candidates in regions, such as the Northeast, that have turned strongly Democratic, and conservatives who argue that the party’s path of recovery is via strict adherence to the Republicans’ conservative national platform.

Boehner acknowledged Sunday that the situation in New York’s 23rd District race is “pretty unusual,” but said the message remains that Republicans accept “moderates in our party.”

I think Boehner is licking the boot of the moderates, these socialist-lights. You better bounce the guy from your cherished movement as he is clearly trotting on the slippery slope to fatigue-wearing Maoism.

These SEPTA folks make $60k/year. That’s a lot in Philly. They want more, so the thugs are holding the city hostage.

I say let em keep striking. Forever.

How many people who make less than that, who get no benefits, will loose their jobs because they rely on this train service? The east-west line in Philly is the busiest subway in the world. The economy sucks, we are all making sacrifices. Why are the SEPTA employees being so selfish?

Get out the firehoses.

When asked whether Scozzafava’s decision sends a signal from the party to other GOP moderates who may be pondering seeking elective office, Boehner stressed, “We accept moderates in our party and we want moderates in our party. We cover a wide range of Americans.”

Ah, but we know the calls for the RINOs to be purged are mounting. Boehner’s comments are more wishful and forward-looking than truthful. Anyone with eyes, ears, and a brain attached to them knows that the intolerance of diversity among the right is being increasingly enforced through strong informal sanctions by their enraged, flat-earther base.

The other hilarious element here is the argument from principles. The principles or this hard-right demographic are as fluid as water. These folks went from hard-core Bush boosters to denigrating everything Bush did in just over a year. Principles? What principles?

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch)—Nine more U.S. banks, all owned by the same Illinois holding company, were closed Friday by regulators, and the FDIC said Bank of Minneapolis would assume their deposits.

The closings brought the 2009 total to 115—the first year since 1992 that more than 100 banks have gone under.

The banks as of Sept. 30 had combined assets of $19.4 billion and deposits of $15.4 billion, the FDIC said.

The deposit insurance fund will take an estimated $2.5 billion hit, the FDIC said.

Enforced and updated that is. This is a non-partisan issue - Updated and enforced anti-trust/competition are a necessary measure to maintain and protect the market.

If we discuss compensation of CEOs we are missing the point. Get out the hatchet. In an environment when neither the government or the companies involved have incentive to properly assess value, the least we can do is update and enforce our competition laws. Without accurate information, access to the market is pointless. It merely becomes a venue to get robbed. Competition laws, and serious ones, will prevent the sort of inefficiencies and theft that accompany large government or sector domination by a single private entity or two.

We all know there will be a dangerous, fascist, Christian-moralizing-assclown party. They will intervene in your living will and advanced directive wishes. They will send money around the world to buy guns for all the foreigners who will use them on us a decade later. They will seek control of women, decrease their positive rights, and so forth. They might even try to ban sinful vices of various sorts.

Hopefully there will be a structural conservative party that emerges with some principles to put forth that aren’t based on 2000 year old religious texts and moralizing myths. One worth engaging who knows how to make arguments and why to make the arguments that they do make. Small government, non-interventionist, live-and-let-live, and not concerned with social issues and federal moralizing.

That would be a nice counter-balance right about now. Not a bunch of assclowns screaming about Chairman Mao.

When will the party address their schizophrenia which ramps up daily? How much crying will accompany the split? How long before it happens?

Now I have an account with some company that I didn’t sign up for and they have a page just for little old me. Isn’t it illegal to sign me up for this stuff which I have not consented to?

The new comment system blows. No two ways about it.

Disappointing.